Conspiracy Theories

[Kate]

Quote:Leaked Confidential Documents Reveal the Influence of Big Pharma on the WHO

How much power does the pharmaceutical industry really have when it comes to shaping governmental policies?

A leaked confidential dossier from the pharmaceutical industry trade associates about the World Health Organisation (WHO) Expert Working Group (EWG) on R&D Financing reveals all.

While these documents, and this story, do not relate specifically to Personal Vaporisers or e-cigs, they do provide a welcome, if somewhat frightening look at the people and organisations we are dealing with.

The International Federation of Pharmaceutical Manufacturers & Associations (IFPMA; "Big Pharma") gave its members 4 documents: a non-public draft report of the WHO EWG and a non-public Comparative Analysis done by the working group, the IFPMA Overview of the EWG Comparative Analysis, and IFPMA summary slide on the EWG Draft Report.

The set of documents linked below show the influence of "Big Pharma" on the policy making decisions of the WHO, the UN body supposedly safeguarding public health. These confidential documents were obtained by the drug industry before their public release to WHO member states (scheduled to be released May 2010). The document also illustrates that the WHO expert group was highly responsive to industry lobbying — a result that public health groups had feared since early 2009, when the expert group met with the industry, but refused to meet with public health groups known to be industry critics.
ewg-comparative-analysis-11-12-09.pdf
ewg-report-draft-20-11-09.pdf

ifpma-ewg-final-report-draft.pdf
ifpma-ewg-internal-mail.pdf
ifpma-ewg-overview-comparative-analysis.pdf

http://www.nationalkeepsmokingday.com/ho...ig-ph.html

[Kate]

I read somewhere today that the MHRA gets funding from pharm companies. If I can remember where I read that I'll post a link.



This is interesting and indicates how the pharm industry might be worried about ecigs v their products that don't work:

Quote:6.5.4.3 E-Cigarettes Will Revolutionise the Face of Tobacco Smoking and Could Pose a Threat to the Smoking Cessation Market

http://velvetgloveironfist.blogspot.com/...-rest.html

[Kate]

Quote:MHRA consultation on the regulation of nicotine containing products

The Regulation of Nicotine Containing Products - Electronic Cigarettes

As part of the Government’s announcement of the new Tobacco Control Strategy, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has announced a consultation on the regulation of all nicotine containing products, which will include the so called ‘electronic cigarettes’.

The CIEH is welcoming this opportunity for serious consideration to be given to how these hazardous products can either be effectively controlled or removed from the market entirely. The sale and use of these unlicensed and largely uncontrolled products, including children’s access to them, has been a cause for concern for too long. Last September the chief executives of CIEH, TSI and Lacors wrote jointly to the Department of Health calling for just such a review. ..

http://www.cieh.org/member_consultations...ettes.html

This is pretty clearly hype to promote the hypothetical risks and ignore the public benefits of an open market.

It's a pity that no government source will tell me what is wrong with existing legislation or why it's not being enforced.

I reckon the introduction of something like the Intoxicating Substances (Supply) Act 1985 would cover all the bases for sure.

[Kate]

This is very interesting and suggests the MHRA is fairly deeply involved in pharm company interests and funding:

Quote:... Like many patient advocates, I have been a long time critic of the MHRA, in particular their 'closeness' toward pharmaceutical companies, who, at the end of the day, pay the MHRA's wages. Only recently I highlighted a recent campaign where the MHRA had joined forces with Pfizer to create awareness about the dangers of buying prescription drugs over the Internet.

Many of my readers will know of the GSK/MHRA connection - Chairman, Alasdair Breckenridge is a former employee of GlaxoSmithKline as is Ian Hudson, Head of Licensing at the MHRA...

http://fiddaman.blogspot.com/2009/02/mhr...e-gsk.html

[Kate]

Quote:European Regulators And Their Conflicts Of Interest

Given the ongoing controversy over conflicts of interest involving the pharmaceutical industry, a group of researchers sought to gauge the extent to which this may be a problem among European regulators - specifically, the Irish Medicines Board, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency in the United Kingdom and the European Medicines Agency in the European Union.

And so they examined three issues - What are the policies and procedures within each agency for dealing with conflicts of interest? Is there COI between senior people employed by these agencies and people in their key advisory committees and the pharmaceutical industry? Is information about employees’ and advisers’ COI made public? Their findings, which were published in Social Science & Medicine, suggests there is reason for concern...

http://www.pharmalot.com/2009/11/europea...-interest/

[Kate]

There's quite a bit about MHRA corruption in this article:

Quote:Much discussion and internet traffic has been devoted to the behaviour and attitude of the MHRA, the UK government drug regulatory agency. The agency is widely regarded as an obfuscating body that acts against the public interest. Some have accused it of colluding with or ignoring industrial scientific fraud, and of acting based on severe conflicts of interest. It has been accused of failing to examine or secure raw data in drug licensing applications. The actions and omissions of agency may have led to deaths resulting from undisclosed, delayed or undiscovered information about pharmaceuticals in the UK.

Despite widespread professional and public concern about this agency, no meaningful steps have yet been taken by the UK government to safeguard pharmaceutical science, the public interest or public health...

http://www.thejabberwock.org/mhra.htm

[Kate]

This message was sent to me, I thought it should be on this thread:

Quote:... The MHRA has just granted licences to nicorette 4 nicotine delivery products 4 long term use as an alternative to cigarettes. So NOT a cessation product .
Is it a coincidence that they are going after e-cigs at exactly the same time?
They NEED the MHRA to reclasify these products as medicine so they can be granted a licence to get there product out whatever that may be...

[Kate]

Government consultations: why bother?

Quote:... In total, 79,272 of the 96,515 responses were generated by anti-smoking organisations, most of them funded with public money, a classic example of a government consultation being manipulated to suit government policy...

http://digg.com/d31K6lz

[Kate]

Not only did the TSI and CIEH team up with LACORS to oppose an open nicotine market and electronic cigarettes but thanks to Old Holborn I've found out that they also collaborated on creating guidelines for council regulatory officers on the implementation of smokefree legislation in England.

That's an interesting document because it highlights disregard for human rights and suppression of dissent. Rather than promote the public interest they present an outline to victimise smokers or anyone who doesn't agree with the current control regime.

Page 23 says:

Quote: In addition to the evidence of smoking taking place, the Courts have also indicated that they are taking into consideration the following matters:
• the number of occasions on which the council is able to demonstrate that information and advice on the smokefree requirements have been provided to the person in control;
• the failure by the person in control to take action after the receipt of such information and advice;
and
• public statements made by or on behalf of the person in control:
• that they do not agree with or support the smokefree legislation;
• that they are actively campaigning against it; or
• that they do not intend to do anything more than simply inform people that they should not smoke.

Officers of LACORS and the CIEH are continuing to closely monitor prosecutions and may be able to provide information on trends, levels of fines and costs, etc but not of course advice to councils in preparing their own cases. Of particular interest are those cases brought against repeat offenders which test the ability of the council to secure penalties prescribed in the legislation which will act as a deterrent against further offending as this information may be used to inform responses to further consultations by the Government.

So we risk prosecution for disagreeing or opposing government policy - policy that's forced on us, at least in part, as a response to CIEH and TSI lobbyists and their priorities (to make people as miserable as possible it seems).



In fact TSI and CIEH are not government departments, they are not publicly owned, are not accountable, are not transparent and appear to be interested in a private agenda of their own brand of values and morals. They don't even bother to pretend they have science based evidence, yet somehow are seen as credible and given influence to run our lives

I've not been able to engage them in rational discussion on their opposition to vaping, the TSI say they aren't bound to talk with me under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act and the CIEH just ignores me. Currently the CIEH claims that there are 'hazardous' products on the commercial market. What they don't say is that means that trading standards officers are not enforcing the law - the General Product Safety Regulations 2005.

Quote:... As part of the Government’s announcement of the new Tobacco Control Strategy, the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) has announced a consultation on the regulation of all nicotine containing products, which will include the so called ‘electronic cigarettes’.

The CIEH is welcoming this opportunity for serious consideration to be given to how these hazardous products can either be effectively controlled or removed from the market entirely. The sale and use of these unlicensed and largely uncontrolled products, including children’s access to them, has been a cause for concern for too long. Last September the chief executives of CIEH, TSI and Lacors wrote jointly to the Department of Health calling for just such a review. ..

The hypothetical risks to children and cause for concern are hardly professional statements and present nothing other than opinion.

The sale and use of unlicensed nicotine products is regulated but the regulations apparently are too inconvenient for trading standards officers to enforce.

These are the people controlling our lives ... outrageous, dangerous and probably illegal. I hope they get exposed and discredited sooner rather than later.

All the discrimination and moralistic crusader behaviour from these fundamentalist dopamine haters is getting on my nerves.

[moog]

Maybe we need to be forcing our MPs to confront this..